Tires Sing, Soul Rocks

The Mythic American Road Can Be Found In Fist-pumping Anthems, Novelty Songs And Odes To Wanderlust. Just Turn The Key And Go.

July 8, 2004|By Dan Neil, Los Angeles Times

The Road.

Do you hear the power of those words, all those songs pouring into your head like the dusty stream from a grain silo? Are you suddenly tangled up in blue on the lonesome highway to hell with white-line fever? Of course you are. Because life is a highway and every day is a winding road. In fact, why don't we do it in the road?

Well, we do. Americans took to the highways in record numbers during Memorial Day weekend -- according to AAA, 36 million traveled more than 50 miles for the holiday, defying unprecedented fuel prices. The summer peregrination is in full force.

And yet, The Road is disappearing. Fading from popular music is the body of imagery, the poetic conventions that evoke the Mythic American Road. Where are the songs written in the cadence of white lines and the key of singing tires, such as Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again"? Where are the songs about fugitive romance (Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee"; about journeys of self-discovery ("America," written by Paul Simon and performed with Art Garfunkel); songs of asphalt adventure ("Take It Easy," co-written by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey, memorably recorded by the Eagles)?

These songs are part of the pop-music canon for a reason. Americans are pilgrims, historically and -- until recently, perhaps -- spiritually. From Lewis and Clark to Tod and Buzz and Thelma and Louise, movement and mobility always have been framed in metaphysical terms. Life on the road is morally superior to settled domesticity. The Road is an intersection of self and space, where aimless wandering has a purpose and the empty horizon is full of promise. This is the big-sky universe of Whitman and Steinbeck and Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson (just don't let him drive). It's the home of fugitive souls such as Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and countless others.

"As I rolled on, the sky grew dark

I put the pedal down, to make some time.

There's somethin' good, waiting down this road

I'm pickin' up whatever's mine."

-- Tom Petty, "Running Down a Dream"

Songwriters and musicians have had plenty of real-life experience to draw on. "Musicians have always been the first ones to be run out of town," says T-Bone Burnett, who put together the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou? -- a picaresque film loosely based on Homer's Odyssey, which might be regarded as the original road song. To a musician, Burnett says, "the road is home."

Of course, some of the greatest road songs are not about the road at all -- any more than Kerouac's On the Road or the driving scenes in Nabokov's Lolita are about transportation infrastructure. AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" is a fist-pumping anthem of dysfunction. Aretha Franklin's "Freeway of Love" -- a song that bounces like a car on the expansion strips on the pavement -- is a classic double-entendre:

"We got some places to see

I brought all the maps with me.

So jump right in . . . Ain't no sin

Take a ride in my machine."

It's the imagery of the road that's so appealing. And it's this very imagery that is fading away.

Take the Google on-ramp to the information superhighway and do a search for "road songs." You will soon come across the Federal Highway Administration's road-song list. Compiled by the agency's self-appointed and -- he is eager to emphasize -- unofficial musicologist, Richard F. Weingroff, the list comprises almost 800 songs that mention roads or highways. When it came to picking out road songs, Weingroff had pretty high standards. "I didn't want a lot of rock songs about the weary travel of the road," he says. Weingroff also brought a bureaucrat's sense of propriety. "In a lot of songs the road is a metaphor for drinking . . . and so on."

On Weingroff's list you will find the usual suspects: the Allman Brothers' "Ramblin' Man"; The Who's "Going Mobile" and the ever popular and bombastic "Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf. The pantheon of rock gods is well-represented. "At first I was just listing songs I liked," the fortysomething Weingroff admits sheepishly. Also included are standards such as Bobby Troup's "Route 66" -- the Rolling Stones' version.

What's interesting in Weingroff's list is the near absence of songs from the past decade. There are a few, to be sure, such as Fastball's 1998 hit "The Way," a song about the mysterious disappearance of an older couple who abandoned their kids to take a road trip. But others only prove the rule. The Stone Temple Pilots' "Interstate Love Song" actually creates its lovelorn landscape around the anachronistic image of train travel.

Frank X. Brusca's Route40.net Web site has a similar compendium of road songs, helpfully organized by rubric, such as "bus songs" ("Promised Land" by Chuck Berry, for instance) or "truck songs" ("Willin' " by Little Feat, or the loony novelty song "Convoy" by C.W. McCall).